Quotes about making
page 68

Nicholas Sparks photo
Haruki Murakami photo
Jeanne Birdsall photo

“People sometimes make unexpected choices when they're lonely”

Jeanne Birdsall (1951) American children's writer

Source: The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy

Joss Whedon photo
Jim Butcher photo

“Faith is about what you do. It's about aspiring to be better and nobler and kinder than you are. It's about making sacrifices for the good of others-- even when there's not going to be anyone telling you what a hero you are.”

Source: The Dresden Files, Changes (2010), Chapter 26
Context: Harry Dresden: But there were some things I believed in. Some things I had faith in. And faith isn’t about perfect attendance to services, or how much money you put on the little plate. It isn’t about going skyclad to the Holy Rites, or meditating each day upon the divine. Faith is about what you do. It’s about aspiring to be better and nobler and kinder than you are. It’s about making sacrifices for the good of others—even when there’s not going to be anyone telling you what a hero you are.

Don DeLillo photo

“Longing on a large scale makes history.”

Source: Underworld

Cassandra Clare photo
Sylvia Plath photo
Janet Fitch photo
George Eliot photo
Jo Walton photo
Roger Rosenblatt photo

“Why do we write?
"To make suffering endurable
To make evil intelligible
To make justice desirable
and… to make love possible”

Roger Rosenblatt (1940) American writer

Source: Unless It Moves the Human Heart: The Craft and Art of Writing

Ben Carson photo
Jodi Picoult photo
Cassandra Clare photo
David Levithan photo
Ayn Rand photo

“Rationalization is a process of not perceiving reality, but of attempting to make reality fit one’s emotions.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Source: Philosophy: Who Needs It?

Richard Siken photo
Stephen Chbosky photo
John Keats photo

“The excellency of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate, from their being in close relationship with beauty and truth.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Letter to G. and F. Keats (December 21, 1817)
Letters (1817–1820)

Cassandra Clare photo

“Moreover, I wish to assure you both that I did not make any amorous advances on female monkeys.”

Giulana and Magnus Bane in 1791, p. 13.
Source: The Bane Chronicles, What Really Happened in Peru (2013)
Context: "But of course you should have retreated at once from the dominant male. Are you an idiot? You are extremely lucky he was distracted from ripping out your throat by the fruit. He thought you were trying to steal his females."
"Pardon me, but we did not have the time to exchange that kind of personal information. I could not have known! Moreover, I wish to assure both of you that I did not make any amorous advances on female monkeys. [... ] I didn't actually see any, so I didn't get the chance."

Sharon Shinn photo

“You have not traveled enough," she said. "Or you'd know that every journey
makes its own map across your heart.”

Sharon Shinn (1957) American science fiction writer

Source: Mystic and Rider

Ben Carson photo

“If we develop in-depth knowledge it will enable us to give our best to others and help to make a better world.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Think Big (1996), p. 152
Source: Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence
Context: THINK BIG means opening our horizons, reaching for new possibilities in our lives, being open to whatever God has in store for us on the road ahead.
T=TALENT : If you recognize your talents, use them appropriately, and choose a field that uses those talents, you will rise to the top of your field.
H=HONEST : If we live by the rule of honesty and accept our problems, we can go far down the road of achievement.
I=INSIGHT : If we observe and reflect and commit ourselves to giving our best, we will come out on top.
N=NICE : If we are nice to others, other respond to us in the same way, and we can give our best for each other.
K=KNOWLEDGE : If we make every attempt to increase our knowledge in order to use it for human go, it will make a difference in us and in our world.
B=BOOKS : If we commit ourselves to reading thus increasing our knowledge, only God limits how far we can go in this world.
I=IN-DEPTH LEARNING : If we develop in-depth knowledge, it will enable us to give our best to others and help to make a better world.
G=GOD : If we acknowledge our need for God, he will help us.

Garrison Keillor photo
Candace Bushnell photo
Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Rick Riordan photo
Richard Bach photo
Donald E. Westlake photo
Roald Dahl photo
Dorothy Parker photo

“You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Parker's answer when asked to use the word horticulture during a game of Can-You-Give-Me-A-Sentence?, as quoted in You Might as well Live by John Keats (1970).
Source: You Might as Well Live: The Life and Times of Dorothy Parker

Wally Lamb photo
John Ashbery photo

“the better you think, the better decisions you make. the better decisions you make, the better actions you take. the better actions you take, the better results you get”

Brian Tracy (1944) American motivational speaker and writer

Source: Reinvention: How to Make the Rest of Your Life the Best of Your Life

Garrison Keillor photo
Charles Bukowski photo

“I was their bar freak, they needed me
to make themselves feel
better.
just like, at times, I needed that
graveyard.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

Barbara Kingsolver photo
Margaret Atwood photo
Samuel Johnson photo

“This is one of the disadvantages of wine, it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

28 April 1778, p. 659 http://books.google.com/books?id=yYphdZ0abhUC&q="One+of+the+disadvantages+of+wine+it+makes+a+man+mistake+words+for+thoughts"&pg=PA659#v=onepage
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol II
Source: The Life of Samuel Johnson LL.D. Vol 2

Thomas Henry Huxley photo
Tom Robbins photo
Joss Whedon photo
John Flanagan photo
Stephen King photo
David Levithan photo
Lois McMaster Bujold photo

“Endure pain, find joy, and make your own meaning, because the universe certainly isn't going to supply it. Always be a moving target. Live. Live. Live.”

Lois McMaster Bujold (1949) Science Fiction and fantasy author from the USA

Vorkosigan Saga, Barrayar (1991)
Source: Cordelia's Honor
Context: Welcome to Barrayar, son. Here you go: have a world of wealth and poverty, wrenching change and rooted history. Have a birth; have two. Have a name. Miles means "soldier," but don't let the power of suggestion overwhelm you. Have a twisted form in a society that loathes and fears the mutations that have been its deepest agony. Have a title, wealth, power, and all the hatred and envy they will draw. Have your body ripped apart and re-arranged. Inherit an array of friends and enemies you never made. Have a grandfather from hell. Endure pain, find joy, and make your own meaning, because the universe certainly isn't going to supply it. Always be a moving target. Live. Live. Live.

Thomas Hardy photo

“I agree to the conditions, Angel; because you know best what my punishment ought to be; only - only - don't make it more than I can bear!”

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) English novelist and poet

Source: Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Gabrielle Zevin photo
Suzanne Collins photo
Milan Kundera photo
John Masefield photo
Warren Buffett photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Malcolm Gladwell photo
Holly Black photo
Richelle Mead photo
Alexandre Dumas photo
Jenny Han photo
Homér photo

“Wine can of their wits the wise beguile, Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile”

XIV. 463–466 (tr. Alexander Pope).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)
Context: Tis sweet to play the fool in time and place,
And wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile,
The grave in merry measures frisk about,
And many a long-repented word bring out.

Joel Osteen photo
Rebecca Solnit photo

“Then tell them we've all got meanness in us… But tell them we have some good in us too. And the only thing worth living for is the good. That's why we've got to make sure we pass it on.”

Variant: ... tell them that we have some good in us, too. And the only thing worth living for is the good. That’s why we’ve got to make sure we pass it on.
Source: Where the Heart Is

Margaret Atwood photo
Conan O'Brien photo
Anaïs Nin photo

“When you make a world tolerable for yourself, you make a world tolerable for others.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

February 1954 The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 5 as quoted in Woman as Writer (1978) by Jeannette L. Webber and Joan Grumman, p. 38
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)
Context: The artist is the only one who knows that the world is a subjective creation, that there is a choice to be made, a selection of elements. It is a materialization, an incarnation of his inner world. Then he hopes to attract others into it. He hopes to impose his particular vision and share it with others. And when the second stage is not reached, the brave artist continues nevertheless. The few moments of communion with the world are worth the pain, for it is a world for others, an inheritance for others, a gift to others, in the end. When you make a world tolerable for yourself, you make a world tolerable for others.
We also write to heighten our own awareness of life. We write to lure and enchant and console others. We write to serenade our lovers. We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection. We write, like Proust, to render all of it eternal, and to persuade ourselves that it is eternal. We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it. We write to teach ourselves to speak with others, to record the journey into the labyrinth. We write to expand our world when we feel strangled, or constricted, or lonely. We write as the birds sing, as the primitives dance their rituals. If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it. When I don't write, I feel my world shrinking. I feel I am in a prison. I feel I lose my fire and my color. It should be a necessity, as the sea needs to heave, and I call it breathing.

Homér photo
Roberto Bolaño photo
Maureen Johnson photo

“Don't get stabbed. It makes everything awkward.”

Maureen Johnson (1973) writer from the USA

Source: The Madness Underneath

Sarah Dessen photo
Nicholas Sparks photo
D.J. MacHale photo
Tom Robbins photo

“No one can make you a victim but yourself.”

Amelia Atwater-Rhodes (1984) Novelist

Source: The Den of Shadows Quartet

John Piper photo
Yann Martel photo
Khaled Hosseini photo
J. Gresham Machen photo
Scott Lynch photo

“I don't expect life to make sense," he said after a few moments, "but it could certainly be pleasant if it would stop kicking us in the balls.”

Source: The Republic of Thieves (2013), Chapter 5 “The Five-Year Game: Starting Position” section 1 (p. 250)
Context: Locke put his head in his hands and sighed.
“I don’t expect life to make sense,” he said after a few moments, “but it would certainly be pleasant if it would stop kicking us in the balls.”

T.S. Eliot photo
Khaled Hosseini photo